Stick with me here for a second. There are thought to be numerous occasions in which police officers conducted illegal searches, knowing they were illegal, in order to confiscate contraband. The search and evidence would not be legally admissible and the person would not face any real threat of prosecution, but the property would not be returned. In the same way, given the real concern that the underwear bomber was part of a larger coordinated attack, as is a hallmark of Al Qaeda, the police may have forgone reading him his rights to try to get all the information he had. If he was eventually treated as a criminal with Constitutional rights then anything he said would be inadmissible. Since the man flash fried his crotch, was tackled by the other passengers, and then in continues custody following the incident, his confession would hardly be needed for a slam dunk conviction. If he was treated as an enemy combatant, then it would not matter anyway. Just thinking out loud...

"The chance to secure crucial information about al-Qaeda operations in Yemen was lost because the Obama administration decided to charge and prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an ordinary criminal, critics say. He is said to have reduced his co-operation with FBI interrogators on the advice of his government-appointed defence counsel.

The potential significance became chillingly clear this weekend when it was reported that shortly after his detention, he boasted that 20 more young Muslim men were being prepared for similar murderous missions in the Yemen. ..."He was singing like a canary, then we charged him in civilian proceedings, he got a lawyer and shut up," Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the Sept 2001 terror attacks on the US, told The Sunday Telegraph."